Fathers and mothers have lost the idea that the highest aspiration they might have for their children is for them to be wiseas priests, prophets or philosophers are wise. Specialized competence and success are all that they can imagine.

Mothers and daughters can stay very connected during teenage years. In the middle of your life, you can become very alone. Even though you're connected deeply to other family members, lovers, husbands, friends.

Holly Hunter

If there were no schools to take the children away from home part of the time, the insane asylums would be filled with mothers

My young men shall never work, men who work cannot dream; and wisdom comes to us in dreams. You ask me to plow the ground. Shall I take a knife and tear my mothers breast? Then when I die she will not take me to her bosom to rest. You ask me to dig for stone. Shall I dig under her skin for her bones? Then when I die I cannot enter her body to be born again. You ask me to cut grass and make hay and sell it and be rich like white men. But how dare I cut off my mother's hair.

Smohalla

We say that a girl with her doll anticipates the mother. It is more true, perhaps, that most mothers are still but children with playthings.